Time Magazine's Man Of The Year!

Carlos Zambrano and Jermaine Dye signed extensions with their respective Chicago clubs this weekend taking two marquee names off the board for the offseason. Both men would have been the subject of some fearsome bidding when the season came to a close but now general managers around baseball will have to turn their gaze elsewhere to find the solution to their team's problems.

If that need is an outfielder there should be some interesting options on the table. Andruw Jones will be available and has had enough good years that you can look past this season's struggles. There's also Torii Hunter and Japanese phenom Kosuke Fukudome to whet appetites. Adam Dunn might be cut loose by the Reds, Aaron Rowand is a fine player and even Barry Bonds is on the open market, if that's your cup of tea, so don't lose any sleep about Dye.

With Zambrano off the market the pickings are mighty slim if you're looking for a top-flight starter, though. Here's a look at who will (and who could be) free this November, not including the three 300 game winners, each of whom could be a free agent because, unless you're the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Braves or Padres, there's little reason to stitch a jersey with the name Clemens, Maddux or Glavine on the back. Continued reading is not recommended for those with weak stomachs or the appreciation of young starters with a plethora of ability.

There's been a problem with the Mets all season. They've played and acted like a team that has a playoff berth as a birthright instead of the scrapping bunch that pulverized the National League last season. There have been injuries that slowed them down to be sure but they haven't shown enough fire and enough consistency to put the East away. Yet they still act as if they have the whole damn thing wrapped up. After blowing 5-0 and 7-3 leads to the bottom-feeding Pirates last night Willie Randolph gave the Pirates credit for battling back and tipped his cap to them. Matthew Cerrone of Metsblog has had enough of the graciousness.

I’m tired of tipping my hat…the Mets are supposed to be the best team in the National League, why should they have to tip their caps to the Pirates, who were basically given this game to win…I dislike this thinking…the Mets should be embarassed and angry, not humble or respectuful…this is a fight, guys, start acting like it…

One of the teams that they are in a fight with is the Phillies. Perennial disappointments to their fans, the Phils have the best offense in the National League and a bunch more games with the Mets to stake their claim to the division. That's a claim that Jimmy Rollins famously, or infamously depending on your point of view, staked before the season started. He was ridiculed for the bravado but was he really wrong? Stephen A. Smith puts down the Cheez Doodles to write that he might not be.

One pitcher in New York, John Maine, has been a shell of himself since the all-star break, going 3-3 with a 6.31 ERA in seven starts. Another, Oliver Perez (3-2, 4.33), hasn't been much better. Tom Glavine is a senior citizen. The oft-injured Pedro Martinez has yet to make his season debut and has garnered little faith. More than a few have contemplated plots to get hold of the aging El Duque Hernandez's birth certificate. And enough have wondered why a few other Mets - namely, Shawn Green and Carlos Delgado - have even been allowed to suit up because of their shaky play.

All of that's true but so is the fact that Philly hasn't played well enough to move past the Mets and neither have the Braves who haven't seen an immediate bounce from the acquisitions of Octavio Dotel and Mark Teixeira. There's no reason to think that the Mets aren't the favorites to win the division but the time has come for them to erase the lingering doubts. They have three games with the Nationals in DC and then a six-game homestand with the Padres and Dodgers before seven games at Philly and Atlanta. It's a defining stretch for the team but it will take a renewed effort to avoid the definition of underachievers.

Yadier Molina doesn't come up with many home runs but he knows how to pick his spots. His Game 7 dinger brought the Cardinals the pennant and last night he blasted two longballs that brought his club with in two and a half games of the Brewers. His batterymate Adam Wainwright looked as sharp as he did as the stopper last October in the 8-0 win that completed a three-game sweep of the very vulnerable Brewers. Milwaukee has lost 13 of 18, haven't gotten a win from a starting pitcher in a fortnight and are just a half-game up on the Cubs. The two pursuers face off in the latest round of their rivalry this weekend and if the Brewers don't pick up some wins they won't be in first place come Monday.

Those Cubs avoided a sweep at the hands of the Reds thanks to Mark DeRosa's big day. He was 5-for-5 with 4 RBI and the Cubs thrashed Cincy's staff in a 12-4 victory. That's a good way to get ready for four games with the Redbirds, starting with Braden Looper and Sean Hill this afternoon at Wrigley Field.

Cole Hamels is the only person Barbara Bush fears. Cole Hamels' picture is on every crisp 100 dollar bill. Cole Hamels is a 14 game winner after pitching six and two-thirds shutout innings in Philly's 4-2 win against the Nationals. For all of his skills he can't close his own games which almost caused disaster for the Phillies as the Nats rallied against Tom Gordon but Chris Roberson made a nifty double play to bail out the pen and Brett Myers threw a scoreless ninth to move his club back into second place in the East.

The Phils are three back of the Mets after the Amazins blew a five-run lead and lost to the Pirates 10-7. They missed out on a sweep when David Wright and Mike DiFelice made errors with two outs in the eighth inning and Aaron Heilman wilted under the added pressure of his teammates. If the Mets end up at home when October baseball begins they can point to this one as a reason why, it's too late in the game to suffer these kinds of games.

The Arizona Diamondbacks have been lost in the shuffle this season. They don't have the flashiest players nor the big market support of your Bostons and New Yorks but they just keep winning. Last night's 5-4 win over the Marlins was the 19th in 24 games and featured such non-household names as Chris Young, Mark Reynolds and Jose Valverde in starring roles.

Prosecutors say he violated a woman during a massage on Jan. 30, penetrating her manually and performing oral sex on her against her wishes.

Araque's spa, Essential Therapy, won an award from New York Magazine in 2006 for what he called his "make-nice" massage. It was described as being "enough to put you to sleep" which is when Araque would begin to make nice. You'll then wake up and feel "fully refreshed."

Araque massaged Mike Piazza and Jose Reyes, among others, while he worked for the Mets but isn't accused of having anything to do with a photo shoot that left Reyes and David Wright looking like 80's-era rent boys. Piazza's blond adventure, however, is still up for much discussion.

In the first series of the 2005 season Mariano Rivera blew two saves to the Red Sox, a repeat of his failures in the previous ALCS. Last September, Mo went on the disabled list with some elbow aches. This April he had a stretch where he gave up seven runs in two and two-thirds innings. And over his last three appearances, three-plus innings, he's given up five runs. He blew one save, just hung on to another one and, yesterday, gave up three runs after Shelley Duncan's two-out ninth inning blast tied the game with the Orioles at 3.

Such struggles from the great Rivera cause writers across the city to take to their pens in an attempt to explain what's wrong with the closer. Joel Sherman of the Post says it's overwork with 10 appearances of more than an inning taking their toll on his arm. That seems reasonable especially in light of last year's trip to the DL after just that kind of taxing workload. Bill Madden asks if Mo is no longer Mo, as if something happened on August 12 that made the man who pitched 15 straight scoreless innings go from hero to zero. Peter Abraham believes it could be an injury, as do the guys at River Ave. Blues. For whatever it's worth, Rivera says that he's "only a human being" and "allowed to make mistakes." What is this, your first day on the job Mo? You aren't allowed to make mistakes when you are the mighty Rivera, you can't just have an off day, no sir there must be a greater explanation.

He got crushed yesterday. Crushed by Nick Markakis for a double and by Miguel Tejada for another double and absolutely smoked by Aubrey Huff for the capping two-run homer. But on Sunday and Monday he didn't get crushed. He got dinked and dunked the same way he has in most of his blown saves through the years. He's walked five guys all season, if you take away those seven April runs and the five over the last three games, he's given up eight runs in 46 innings. I don't mention those stats to say that he may not be hurting or overworked or that he may not be getting old, any and all of those things may be true, but just to say that the struggles of Rivera get magnified like no other. People asked if he was done after the 2004 ALCS, they seem to ask if he's done anytime he's less than perfect and, for me, there's just not enough evidence to say anything other than he's hit a rough patch. Imagine if guys like Madden were held to the same standard that they hold Rivera to, we'd have a lot more turnover in the newspaper ranks.

You can believe whatever you like about the legitimacy of Barry Bonds' 758 home runs unless what you believe is that they are doing all that much to help the Giants win. They fell to 10-12 when Bonds goes deep in an 8-7 loss to the Pirates. Bonds homered off his old teammate Matt Morris and the guy San Francisco got for Morris, Rajai Davis, just missed a cycle and scored four times but that wasn't enough. They led 6-2 in the eighth when Jonathon Sanchez gave up four hits and four runs to give up the lead and three more relievers combined to allow a couple more and the game got away from the home side. The win was a nice one for the Pirates but Morris made everyone who questioned their trade look smart by giving up seven hits, five walks and five runs. It's probably better to just focus on the positive.

Erik Bedard didn't pick up a win, snapping a six-start streak, but the Orioles made it 10 straight in games he's started by coming back against the Red Sox bullpen. The Eric Gagne trade was supposed to make the Sox a sure bet if they got to the pen with a lead and Gagne had a 5-1 edge in the bottom of the eighth when the shit hit the fan. He walked one, gave up three hits and had to be replaced with Hideki Okajima who gave up the game-tying hit to Melvin Mora. He got out of the inning but couldn't escape the ninth. Brian Roberts doubled to lead off the frame and Nick Markakis won it 6-5 with a sac fly.

Carlos Delgado had just tied the game in the bottom of the ninth, taken John Maine off the hook and given the Mets a chance to move five and a half games up on the Braves. Everyone knew it. Except Willie Harris. The Atlanta leftfielder ran down the blast and dragged it back into Shea Stadium to keep the score 7-6 Braves and give them two out of three in their showdown with the Mets. If Harris were a little bit shorter Delgado's homer would have capped a four-run, ninth-inning comeback as the Mets furiously tried to erase the previous eight innings. Maine was terrible, giving up back-to-back homers in the fifth that blew the game wide open. Mark Teixeira had his fourth since coming to Atlanta and Chipper Jones crushed a ball off the scoreboard to right-center. Jose Canseco approves and says that Chipper's definitely clean. He might not be able to prove it but the Mets aren't able to prove that they've put their long-standing problems with the Braves behind them, they've lost eight of 12 games to Atlanta this year, and that's a problem with six games left against them.

The Dodgers scored in the first inning to break a three-game shutout streak and they scored in the 11th to snap a six-game losing skid. Rafael Furcal homered to beat the Reds 5-4 in extra innings, after thrice making the final out of an inning with runners in scoring position. The Dodgers also swung a trade yesterday to try and help the offense, albeit in a limited manner. They acquired Mark Sweeney, second all-time in pinch hits, from the hated Giants for future considerations.

Josh Willingham passed kidney stones over the weekend, a pain that makes a man wish for a torn ACL, and returned to the Florida lineup with a two-run homer that helped them beat the Phillies 4-2. The win pulled the Marlins out of sole possession of last place in the NL East and stopped the Phillies from gaining a game on the Mets. They also fell a half-game back of the Braves in advance of their weekend set.

Kyle Davies made Dayton Moore look like a genius for grabbing him in a trade for Octavio Dotel. Moore, the former assistant GM in Atlanta, took Davies because he knew him not because of the way he pitched for the Braves this season and got paid back with six and two-thirds innings of shutout ball. Davies retired 14 straight Twins at one point in the 1-0 win and Joakim Soria notched the save in Dotel's absence.

The Dodgers caught some flak at the trading deadline when they failed to pull the trigger on a move to help their mediocre offense. They should probably steel themselves for more of the same after getting shut out for the third straight game. Aaron Harang struck out eight in eight innings in Cincinnati's 1-0 win and extended the Dodger blues to heights unseen in four decades. The 1966 Dodgers got shut out three times in a row twice, once in the regular season and again over the final three games of the World Series against the Orioles. Will the Dodgers be heading to the Series themselves? It's not looking too good. Yesterday's loss dropped the losers of six straight into fourth place behind the Rockies.

After playing one of the strangest games in memory on Tuesday, the Rockies settled in for a more routine Coors Field slaughter Wednesday. They devoured Yovani Gallardo for 12 hits and 11 runs in two and two-thirds innings en route to a 19-4 win. That made it a clean sweep of the Brewers who hold onto first place in the Central only because their four-game losing streak has coincided with one for the Cubs. Timing is everything, as it is for the underrated Rockies. The NL West lead has belonged to the Dodgers, Padres and Diamondbacks at one time or another without any of them seizing it by the throat. If the Rockies, winners of eight of the last 11, keep playing well they may get to laugh last and best.

There was an October atmosphere at Shea Stadium. Moises Alou had broken a 3-3 tie in the bottom of the eighth and Flushing was rocking in hopes of beating their rivals. But Billy Wagner felt like the pressure wasn't great enough. The Mets closer had loaded the bases with Braves in the ninth with no one out and a one run lead. If he blew this one, giving the Braves the first two games of the series, it would have been treated as if he'd blown a playoff game. Jeff Francoeur grounded into a fielder's choice, though, and Andruw Jones followed up with a tailor-made double play ball and the Mets had a 4-3 win. In other Mets news Pedro Martinez got bombed in his first rehab start, five runs and six hits, but didn't compain of injury. So far, so good then.

Jose Contreras finally figured out a way to win a game. He threw two innings of relief and picked up the W when Juan Uribe homered in the bottom of the 13th to beat the Indians 6-4. It was his first appearance since the Yankees massacred him in the Bronx last week and his first win since June 18th.

When the Braves swung a pair of big deals last week I predicted that they would turn up the heat on the Mets in the National League East. They made me look pretty smart in last night's 7-3 win even if Mark Teixeira and Octavio Dotel didn't play major roles. Matt Diaz and Jeff Francoeur homered off Oliver Perez in the first three innings as the Braves built a 6-0 lead and put the game in cruise control. Perez had beaten the Braves three times this season but his luck ran out. The Mets should hope that's an isolated case or the dog days will be toasty indeed.

The Mets aren't the only team wilting in the summer heat. The Red Sox dropped their second straight game to the Angels on Tuesday night and can't help but notice that the Bronx Bombers in their rear-view mirror are closer than they appear. You'd think that might be the lead in the AP game recap or perhaps it would be something about how the 10-4 victory extended the Angel winning streak to three games but since we must deal with a bit more Barry-mania it was "on the same night his former baby sitter broke Hank Aaron's home run record, Gary Matthews Jr. hit one himself and robbed another player of another." That actually does more to explain this story than anything about last night's game.

Some San Diegans might not care for the St. Louis heat but Jake Peavy isn't one of them. He ran his scoreless streak to 14 innings with six shutout frames in a 4-0 win and improved his record on the road to 6-0 overall. His ERA away from home is 0.89 which makes his more pedestrian (6-5, 3.10 ERA) results at pitcher-friendly PETCO Park quite surprising.

Hanley Ramirez hit the first pitch of last night's game against the Phillies for a home run. The Marlins, buoyed by that early luck, turned around and gave up 11 unanswered in return. Jamie Moyer, unfazed by Ramirez's mashing, threw six strong innings and has never lost to the Marlins in his major league career.

Justin Upton had quite the game in his home debut. He doubled, tripled and homered off Pirate starter Tom Gorzelanny to make Arizona salivate with the thought of a decade of Uptonian goodness. Sadly his teammates managed only one other hit off the Bucco hurler and made four errors in an 8-3 loss.

It took Alex Rodriguez eight games to hit his 500th home run. It took Barry Bonds six games to hit his 755th. By that measure Tom Glavine's one start between wins 299 and 300 was nothing to cry about but there was a difference. Neither A-Rod nor Bonds had to rely on the likes of Guillermo Mota and Pedro Feliciano to assure them of their spot in history. Glavine did and it cost him in his first try at 300 and almost did again last night.

Glavine left after six and a third innings with a runner on second, one out and a 5-1 lead. After Mota and Feliciano did their business it was a 5-3 lead and Glavine had to be wondering if his relievers were on his side or not. His lineup left no such doubts, though. Carlos Delgado drove in runs in the eighth and ninth, Paul Lo Duca added another RBI and Billy Wagner pitched a scoreless ninth to make Glavine the fifth lefty in history to win the magic 300 games. It was the capping milestone in a big weekend for baseball, a day late for a trifecta of historical highlights maybe but just in time to start a new week with only Barry's quest for 756 in the hands of the baseball gods.

Glavine's win overshadowed the return of Kerry Wood to the major leagues. There's a nice bit of asymmetry there. When Glavine broke in with Atlanta in 1987 there couldn't have been many predicting that the finesse reliant southpaw who picked baseball over hockey would become one of the greatest pitchers that ever nibbled the corners of the plate. When Wood struck out 20 Astros in his fifth big league start, however, people were predicting the second coming of Roger Clemens, Bob Gibson and Nolan Ryan rolled into one. But the injuries that Glavine's avoided all hit Wood instead. 71 wins and numerous surgeries later, Wood's a middle reliever happy to throw a scoreless inning and we all get a lesson in just how hard it is to win 300 major league games.